Game Reviews

Smash Hit

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| Smash Hit
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Smash Hit
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| Smash Hit

Smash. Tinkle. Crash. Get used to those sounds if you're going to be playing Smash Hit for any length of time. This is a game constantly soundtracked by the collapse of glass things, as you pelt them with pinballs.

It's an ambient first-person physics shooter that sees you travelling down a set course, tapping on the screen to fire out balls. When you run out of balls it's game over, and you need to start the whole course over again, or drop back in at one of the checkpoints.

Glassed

Blue shapes are spread around the levels, and hitting these gives you extra balls to blast out. You need to watch out for them, because the further you get into the game the sparser, and harder to hit, they become.

Racking up combos of blue shapes gives you multi-ball bonuses that make smashing the various obstacles and chunks of scenery that swing, dart, and collapse in your way.

It's when things start popping up in front of you that the game actually get interesting. Roped up panes of thick coloured glass swing down in front of you, large lumps of black scenery collapse down around you, and chunks of the ceiling spring up to block your passage.

Things speed up as you progress through the checkpoints, and the colours and hues of the play area shift and change as you're propelled through the tunnel of stuff-you-have-to-break by some unseen force.

There's a specific, unhurried pace to proceedings that's not exactly calming, but that gives the game a certain atmosphere of its very own.

Glassy

Smash Hit grows a little as you play through, adding new power-ups that make things explode, slow down time, or give you an infinite amount of super-fast balls for a brief spell.

It isn't an energetic shooter, and while it does have moments that'll make you curse, it'll be softly, under your breath, and without any real conviction.

Still, there's some fun to be sucked from the simple tapping gameplay, and the constant crashing makes for a strangely cathartic experience.

Smash Hit

A simple, cathartic on-rails pinball shooter, Smash Hit doesn't have much to offer beyond its initial mechanics, but it's still pretty fun
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.